


half myth, half truth

by saltandlimes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Thor (2011), Thorki Big Bang 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 12:54:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16534973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandlimes/pseuds/saltandlimes
Summary: A town is being swallowed up by a mysterious forest and everyone who ventures deep inside it is never seen again. It's just the sort of quest that Thor and Loki venture across the galaxy to find. They vanquish evil, and are lauded as heroes, as the sons of Odin should be. This time, however, things are not as easy as they first appear.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> +Thanks so much to the TBB 2018 mods for organizing everything! You guys did so well!

“What kinda room do you and your partner want?”

Thor grinds his teeth at the humanoid robot’s question. It’s been happening for years now. They’re wandering around some world just outside the nine realms, somewhere that Thor has dragged Loki, cajoled him with the promise of precious artifacts and magics unknown. They stop at an inn for the night, just to pass the time. When they ask for a room, explaining that they’re brothers and want to watch each others backs, they get a raised eyebrow and a skeptical look. When they walk downstairs the next morning, the innkeeper asks if they slept well, and then asks if the bed was strong enough - _because you look like the sort of men who could break a few boards if you wanted_ \- always conveyed with a nervous laugh and a raised brow. It happens all too often. 

Thor knows what it means, of course. He may be only a thousand years old by the Midgarder or Aelfheimer calendars, but he’s been around long enough to recognize that sly smile. His father sends it his way each time he pulls a warrior out of the hall after a feast, his hand clenched firmly on their bicep and his face flushed with fine ale. Yet at home, leaving the hall with Loki occasions no surprise. They slide away from the festivities to find a quiet corner where Thor can regale Loki with tales of his exploits and Loki can chide him for endangering himself. 

At home, Loki’s arm around his shoulders, or his head on Loki’s lap will draw no glances, except perhaps a smile from his mother and a nod from his father. But here, out beyond the boundaries of the realms, where no one cares about Asgard and its traditions, things are different. 

He’s brought of his frustrated musing by Loki’s soft voice. He looks over at his brother, wondering how Loki will break the news of their kinship this time. Loki smiles, though, and Thor takes a deep breath. The smile doesn’t quite reach Loki’s eye, just an upturn at the corner of his lips, a slight quirk of an eyebrow. 

“We’ll take the nicest.”

The robot rattles off the price while Thor is still staring at Loki in confusion. This is not how the script goes. Someone makes an assumption, and Loki sets them to rights. That is how this is supposed to go. Loki simply hands over payment, though, not even looking at Thor. 

Thor follows him deeper into the inn, his boots stomping on the polished floor. Loki moves like a feather, flitting in front of him in soft leather boots that whisper against the wooden planks that line the hall. The robot trundles along in front, its rollers screeching every few feet. When they’ve gone halfway down the dark hall, it opens up a door for them. 

Loki steps inside first, a thin green glow enveloping his fingertips for a moment before he nods to Thor. Thor stomps in afterward, and the robot bobs its visor at them. It trundles away, leaving them in the wood paneled room together. Thor looks around in consternation. There’s a wide bed in one corner, a couch at one side, and a huge armchair standing catty-corner to the couch, but nothing else. He throws his pack down next to the chair, standing Mjolnir next to it. Soft light filters in through the curtained windows before Loki throws them open, looking at the city down below them. 

Calling it a city is generous. It’s perched on the edge of a forest that covers two thirds of the planet’s land, a forest so deep that songs have been made just to worship the green darkness at its heart. The city is walled all around with a huge timber fence, tall enough even Thor could not easily climb it. It shuts the small outpost away from the forest, blocking out the wildlife that cannot be tamed.

Loki turns back to Thor, smiling that half smile. Thor throws himself down on the chair, and it creaks under his own weight. He’s shorter than most of the species that pass through here, but they do not have his bulk. 

“Remind we why we came to this forsaken outpost, brother?” Loki asks. 

Thor laughs. Just like Loki, not to enjoy the quiet of this land, so far away from everywhere. 

“For glory, brother. For glory and honor, and the right to say we have succeeded where no one else has.”

“A strange place to seek glory, though I suppose even the darkest caverns may hide treasures.” Loki makes his way towards the window and looks out. “How could they have let it get this bad?”

“Letting themselves be overtaken by something so far outside of their power that they cannot even understand it?” Thor asks. “It sounds a little like falling in love.”

“Thor,” Loki sighs, and Thor grins. 

“I know it’s not anything like that. It’s a mess of a forest that’s somehow taken over their city and their planet, and there’s something deep inside it that defeats anyone who goes to confront it. That’s not love.”

Loki turns away from the window, raising an eyebrow at him. He says nothing, though, and Thor pushes himself out of the chair to go join Loki at the window. 

Dusk lies heavily on the forest, pressing into the town with thin fingers, each of them a little tendril of dark reaching out to caress the palisade. Even here, in the center of the town, the rustling of branches comes on the wind, the smell of leaf litter and decay heavy in the air. Thor wrinkles his nose at it. 

“Not to your liking, brother?” Loki asks from beside him, and Thor starts. He’d almost forgotten Loki is still next to him.

“It smells,” Thor says. 

“Maybe that’s why they can’t get anyone to go deep into the forest and come back. They’re overwhelmed by the smell.”

“Don’t tease, Loki. This is a serious journey.”

“Of course,” Loki laughs a little as he pats Thor’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll take defeating a deep dark bunch of trees seriously.”

Thor laughs in spite of himself. When Loki puts it like that, it can’t really be that hard of a task, even if everyone before them has disappeared into the forest, never to come out again. 

***

Thor rubs his eyes after he swings up into the saddle. He slept poorly last night. He’d woken twice to find himself pressed up against Loki’s back, one arm trying to work its way around Loki’s waist. He’d shaken himself off both times, rolling back to his side of the bed and burying his face in his pillow, hoping to stay there until morning. Then he’d woken early, scuttling out of bed before Loki could wake as well and find them tangled together once again. He didn’t want to hear his brother complain, not that early and not with a long day of travel in front of them.

They make their way through the muddy streets, Thor still scrubbing at his face. It doesn’t help that Loki looks fresh and bright, his skin shining and his eyes wide. As they pass between narrow rows of houses, Thor finally gives up trying to push exhaustion from his face. He will wake up soon enough, after they’re out of this dismal town.

When they arrived last night, the Bifrost set them down in the town’s small spaceport. Thor hadn’t really looked about then, but now he does. The shops the line the street are all of rough hewn wood, their awnings folded down in front of them and their shutters locked tight. He can see a few robots milling about here and there, but otherwise the early dawn still holds the town in the clutches of sleep.

There are signs, here and there, of old prosperity. A perfectly hewn marble column marks the turn in a street, and a shop seems to be built on foundations of the same marble. The fabric of the awnings is well woven, but everywhere he looks it is tattered and old.

Thor remembers, distantly, what this place looked like two hundred years ago. He and Loki had spent time here then, celebrating and carousing with the Warriors Three. Back then, it had been a city all of gold and stone, where every indulgence was catered to, and where learning was the highest currency. It had been one of Loki’s favorite places to visit.

Now, all that is left is a shadow. The forest has pressed in to the city, slipping tendrils of green through the outskirts and undermining the marble with roots stronger than iron. It is a rough, ramshackle place, one which Thor would not even give a second glance, were he to stumble across it on a journey through the stars.

They’re coming to the edge of the town’s boundaries now. There’s a wide open space that stretches from the last houses to the palisade. The houses here, closest to the dead grass that surrounds the wall, are even more worn than those deeper inside. Their walls are gnarled with age and their windows gape out as curtained eyes, staring sightlessly at the thick trunks that make up the wall.

Thor reins in his horse, pausing with Loki beside him, looking out at the worn wood that forms an unbroken wall in front of him. His horse prances a little, stirring uneasily as Thor stares out. 

“Which way to the gate?” he asks Loki. 

“Left, I think. There’s only one gate out, and we have to check in with the guardsman when we leave.”

“Does no one ever go outside?” Thor wonders. 

“I think they venture under the eaves of the forest, but it’s not a place to be trifled with, at least according to them.” Loki sneers.

Thor nods. The people here are obviously overly afraid of the dark trees that have been eating up their town and their land, but it’s no good to mock them while he and Loki are still within the town’s boundaries. He turns his horse left, moving out into the dead grass along the border. 

Loki finds his way up next to him, close as he always is, and Thor smiles. Here, in this desolate place, filled with the ghosts of old memories, Loki by his side is a reassurance. 

They ride on around a curve in the fence, and there, in front of them, is the gate. It’s a small thing, just wide enough for two riders abreast. There are heavy wooden doors marking it in the palisade, bound in iron with huge rivets driven through the iron. Thor reins up in front of it, looking at the guard house that has been built onto the wall. 

The windows are shuttered and barred, but a tiny glimmer of light shines through the hinges. He slides off his horse, patting her on the withers. Loki dismounts as well, and they lead their horses right up to the painted red door. 

Thor gives it one thunderous knock, his fist falling heavily on the weather-beaten wood. Before he can knock again, it’s wrenched open, and a gnarled old man stands in the doorway. 

“Whatcha want?” he asks. 

“We intend to go into the forest,” Thor starts. Loki snickers and pushes his way a little in front of him. 

“What my brother means is that we would like you very much to open the gate, because we would like to try our fortunes there and, we hope, free your town of the menace that threatens is.” He smiles at the gatekeeper, bowing slightly. 

The man looks between the two of them, narrowing his eyes, then nods. 

“It’s your funeral, it is,” he tells them. “But far be it for me to refuse the two of you if you want to die in a green grave.”

“You have so little faith in our abilities?” Thor growls. 

“Nay, son,” the man says. “But I’ve seen more men than ye go into that forest, and I ain’t seen any come back, not in twenty years I’ve been guarding this gate.”

“You will see us return,” Loki promises. “We are the sons of Odin, Allfather, and we do not fail.”

The gatekeeper only chuckles drily, the deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth growing even deeper as he gives them a wry smile. 

“I’ll believe your boasts when I see ye hale and whole,” he says. He steps out of the house, leaving the door half open behind him, and makes his slow, stumbling way over to the gate. There’s only one key on the ring that he draws out of a deep pocket in his coat, and he fits it into the lock easily. Then he pushes the gate open, and it swings outwards to reveal a narrow path leading out to the forest. 

The trees come right up to the wall here, crowding it, their branches reaching out to caress it like the hesitant fingers of a lover just about to make her newest conquest. Thor nods to the gatekeeper, and leads his horse through the gate, Loki right behind them. The gatekeeper pulls it shut just as Loki’s horse clears its arc, and then they are all alone, in the early morning forest. 

***

The first few minutes into their journey, there is nothing to see save trees and moss and dead leaves. The forest here has the look of new growth, little bright ferns popping up here and there in the midst of the underbrush. A few lichen covered boulders hulk along the path. As Loki and Thor ride past one of them, Thor makes out the faint lines of old carvings, almost eaten away by the green and rust colored plant life covering it. 

The path is barely visible in places, but Thor’s horse steps surely through the forest, and he gives her her head, letting her choose the best route through the trees. Loki rides silently behind him, though every now and then Thor hears him murmuring some sort of encouragement to his horse. 

They’ve been riding for about half an hour when suddenly, the path opens up into a glade. There, bend over a patch of cloudberries at one side of the clearing, is an old woman. Thor reins in his horse, glancing over to Loki when Loki rides up beside him. Before they can say anything, the old woman turns around and peers at them. 

“Well who might you be?” she asks. She’s swaddled in a thick skirt and a headscarf, but her eyes gleam out from under it brightly. “It’s early yet to be going hunting, and you’re far enough from the wall already.”

Thor gives Loki another glance. Loki shrugs minutely. 

“My lady, we are no hunters from your village. We have come from far away, in the hopes that we can save your town from certain doom.”

She hums, tottering closer to them and looking up at both of them in turn. Then she reaches out and pats Thor’s horse on the muzzle. 

“Have you indeed?” She asks. “Bold words, young boys.”

“We are not so young as all that,” Thor says. “We have fought many battles and have returned hale from many quests in our time.”

“And I suppose you’ve done all that through the power of those great arms you have there,” she says, laughing. It’s a dry, rattling sound, as though dead leaves are cracking under a heavy weight. 

“And our minds,” Loki interjects. 

She turns to him, raising an eyebrow. Loki stares back at her, his lips even thinner than they usually are. He urges his horse back a step, taking it out of range of her touch. 

“Your minds and your might, is it?” She says. “Things that boys like you have aplenty. Well, that’s not what you’ll need here. You might as well turn back now.”

Thor bristles, even as he tries to remind himself that she is old, and perhaps does not know what she says. He clenches his fists on his reins and shakes his head a little. 

“We do not turn back from a quest, not when it has hardly been undertaken.”

“Foolish,” she laughs. She turns away from them, making her inching way back to the berry patch, her back to them. Even so, Thor can see her shoulders heaving and catches the sound of dead leaves once again crackling on the wind. 

Loki slides off his horse, tossing the reins to Thor and darting forward to catch up with her. Thor can just hear him ask her to stop, his voice low and honeyed. She turns a little ways towards him, her lips pursed. 

“Why is it foolish, my lady?” Loki asks. He gives her that slow smile he always uses on ladies of the court, as though they are sharing some intimate secret, some tidbit of gossip that is theirs and theirs alone. 

“More foolish for you than for your big friend,” she says. 

Loki’s eyes flame, but he only cocks his head to one side. 

“Why so?”

“You will not gain this prize through strength of arms, but that does not trouble you,” she tells him. 

“How are you so sure?” Thor asks, dismounting as well, and joining Loki next to her, bringing the horses a little closer. 

“I’ve seen enough,” she says. 

On the ground, she is only half his height, bent and twisted with age, her gnarled fingers bulbous where they clutch a basket full of berries. Her eyes are sharp when she stares up at him, though. 

“And what have you seen?” Loki asks.

“This forest does not abide pretension, nor lies. It does not abide those whose hearts are clouded, or who come without knowing themselves fully.”

Loki snickers. 

“That’s awfully specific for a bunch of trees,” he says. Thor laughs along with him. 

“This place has ever been a place of truth. For millennia uncounted, our woods and our people grew in harmony with one another, each learning from the other. Yet now when the people have abandoned that, are you surprised that the balance has been disturbed?”

Thor cocks his head to one side. It is not like anything he has known before, a living forest rebelling against its land and people. He’s about to question her, but Loki speaks up first. 

“And how would you know this? We are not some young men, living only a few cycles around the sun, nor are we blind and dumb as the people on this planet. We feel the throb of the universe around us, the very breath of its life-force. And we have never felt any green and growing thing with such needs.”

She laughs once again, her cracking voice that of branches rustling in the wind, and reaches out to pat Loki’s arm. 

“You may be the offspring of the elders, or great warriors of some empire, or the sons of Odin of Asgard himself, but that does mean that you know all there is to know about this universe.”

“Perhaps not yet,” Loki accedes. “But that does not mean we do not know enough to seek the heart of this forest, and find out if what you have said is the truth your trees prize so highly.”

She looks them over, her eyes gleaming deep in their folds of skin, brighter than the sunlight around them. Then she reaches out, and grips Thor’s arm as well, holding them both with fingers that are stronger than they look. 

“You may be able to, but I do not think you will like what you find there.”

“How do you know?” Thor asks, trying not to throw her off. 

“No one else has seemed to like it enough to return to the village.” 

“We will,” Thor tells her. “We have not failed in a quest since we were but godlings. We will not fail here.”

“If you cannot be dissuaded then…” she trails off, staring at them both. The moment stretches out, her fingernails digging into Thor’s arm through his leather armor. Finally, whatever she’s looking for, she seems to find, because she releases them both. 

“Follow the path. There will be a gate. It will let you into the forest proper. The villagers do not stray past it unless there is need. It will take you where you need to go.”

Thor bows slightly to her. 

“We thank you for your advice, good lady.”

She only turns away from them both, going back to her berries without a word.

***

They follow the path the old woman pointed out to them. Neither have remounted, and Thor finds himself pressed closer to Loki by the trail, their horses walking slowly along behind them. Loki’s brow is furrowed, and every so often his tongue pokes out from between his thin lips.

Every few steps their arms brush against one another with a soft snick of leather meeting leather. It blends into the sounds of their horses hooves, and the muffled thud of their own footsteps on the leaf litter. Thor finds himself listening for it, though, working to pick out that one reminder of their closeness within the wild noise of the forest.

Last night, Loki next to him had been a distraction. His warm skin had been too close to Thor’s, his slow breathing too familiar. It is long since they slept so close. 

When they were children, they had shared one bed for long years, and that sound had been the one thing that would lull Thor to sleep when the excitement of the day was more than he could stand. Even after that, when they had been given separate beds, Thor had fallen asleep to the sound of Loki’s breathing just a few yards away. It is only since they reached manhood and were judged to be ready for their own rooms that Thor has grown used to silence at night.

Now the noise of Loki’s sleep reminds him not of his brother, but of the lovers Thor has taken over the past few centuries. They have been the only ones to share his bed, and the only ones to curl close to him at night. His body is too used to taking the one in his bed into his arms. He is too used to pressing his face into long, dark hair, and wrapping his hands around slim pale waists to sleep with Loki and not touch.

It would not be so bad, perhaps, if Thor did not know that Loki does not welcome such closeness. He shies away from Thor’s casual touches, and shrinks from the arms Thor sometimes slings across his shoulders. Even in this close forest, only the leather of their armor touches.

Thor rolls his shoulders. He will take what he can get.

The trees suddenly open up in front of them, sun filtering through green leaves into a clearing even smaller than the last one. There is a low fence running through the center of it. It disappears off into the gloom of the forest on either side, its poles choked with climbing vines and its crossbars covered with weeds. Where it breaks free from the forest and finally finds its way to the clearing, its wood is weathered and scarred.

Right in the center, there is a gate. The hinges have rusted, and they seem as though they are spots of dried blood against the darkness of the wood, hanging onto the fence almost miraculously. Their bolts are the same dark red, speckled with the last remnants of bright metal, and Thor wonders if they will someday fail, and the gate will come crashing down, becoming nothing more than rotting wood on the forest floor. 

Their horses balk as they all step into the clearing, and Thor tears his eyes from the fence to hold to the reigns and whisper sweet words. Next to him, Loki does the same, his voice a slow murmur like running water. At the sound of their words, the horses calm a little bit, but they still pick their way hesitantly across the clearing when Thor and Loki try to lead them forward. 

Thor shoots Loki a glance, and Loki shrugs. There is nothing here that seems out of place, no snakes hanging in branches or lurking in the grass to send their war-trained horses into such a state. Thor shakes his head. 

The wood of the gate is strangely cool when he sets his hand on it, as though it is intent on rotting away, even in the bright sunlight of the glade. A little of it crumbles in his hand. He pushes it open carefully. 

The rusted hinges make no noise, and the gate opens smoothly outward. Thor looks back at Loki, who has paused a few feet away. 

“Ready?” he asks, although he’s not sure what they’re readying themselves for. 

“Always,” Loki grins. “Would you like me to go first, Thor? If I did not know better, I would say that my brave brother was nervous.”

Thor growls, his chest rumbling before he can bite back the sound. He shakes his head, his hair falling in his face, and strides through the gate to the other side of the clearing. His horse follows slowly, reluctantly, but eventually they’re both through.

The other side feels no different. Thor chuckles to himself. It is simply a gate in a forest. 

Loki follows him. His eyes slide shut for a moment when he steps though the gate, and when he’s on the other side, he looks up at Thor with his eyes narrowed. 

“There was no seidr. I thought there would be.”

***

The journey on the other side of the gate seems easier somehow, as though they have passed a first trial, and now they have leave to make their way through the forest. They remount their horses, and ride side by side, the path wider now. Loki has not stopped looking around, but when Thor asks him what he’s looking for, Loki only smiles. 

“Nothing. I’m looking for nothing, Thor.”

“And are you finding it?” Thor asks, wishing that they were a little closer, so that he could poke a finger into his brother’s side and hear him shriek and complain of Thor’s taunting. Instead, Loki only scoffs at him. 

“I was being serious, Thor.” He complains. 

“So was I,” Thor snickers. 

“Well then, if you must know, I am. There is no magic here, no web of spells.”

“Was the old woman lying to us?” Thor asks, interested now. 

“I don’t know,” Loki tells him. “Are fairy tales and myths lies?”

“Some of them are. Remember the one from Midgard? About you and Sigyn? Or about you and the horse?”

Loki flushes. He urges his horse a little farther away from Thor’s, and for a moment, Thor regrets teasing him. 

“I never slept with a horse. Especially not in the form of a mare.”

Thor’s regret disappears in a moment, and he raises an eyebrow, looking at Loki closely.

“So you and Sigyn?”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business. You’ve definitely slept with your share of your friends. Or is the rumor about you and Fandral only that?”

It’s clumsy, especially for Loki, an obvious attempt to turn the conversation back on Thor himself. Thor is about to call him out on it, when Loki holds up a hand. 

“You’re not-” Thor starts, but Loki hisses at him. 

“Don’t you hear that, Thor?” 

“Hear what?” Thor asks, halting his horse in the middle of the trail a few paces in front of Loki. 

“Quiet,” Loki whispers. Thor presses his lips together, but cocks his head in the direction Loki points. All he hears is the sound of the forest, air whispering between branches, and small creatures scurrying through the underbrush. Then, faintly, comes the sound of a voice.

It’s muffled, as though coming through thick walls, but it is unmistakably that of a man. Thor slides off of his horse, then pauses to listen once again. The cries are losing strength, but their direction is clear, and the fear in the voice is plain as well. He looks over at Loki, who looks back. 

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Thor asks. “Get off your horse. We have to help him.”

Loki’s nose twitches, his mouth screwing up, but he slides off his horse as well. A whispered word in her ear ensures that she will not stray, and Thor waits while Loki does the same for his horse. 

“Are you sure about this?” Loki asks quietly, as Thor turns in the direction of the cries and makes to step off the path. “We may be walking into some sort of a trap. The old woman did tell us that the villagers do not venture out here without need.”

“All the more reason to go find out who is yelling,” Thor tells Loki. He pushes a narrow branch out of his face, picking his way around broken rocks on the forest floor. “Branch,” he tells Loki, but Loki’s frustrated growl says the warning came a little late. Thor glances behind himself to find Loki rubbing his cheek. There’s a red line across it, and Thor wishes he could stop to stroke his fingers across it and truly apologize. He can’t, though. The shouts are growing even fainter. Whoever is yelling is exhausting themselves. 

Loki glares at him, but pushes at the small of Thor’s back to get him moving again. Thor nods, and starts off again. 

The forest grows thicker as they push forwards, the branches weaving more and more closely together, and the inches between trees and shrubs is choked by heavy litter, detritus from autumns unnumbered. Thor shoves it all out of the way, his great arms working to clear a path for Loki behind him. Loki picks his way gingerly after Thor, his footsteps a soft echo of Thor’s as he trails in his wake. 

The screams grow louder. Then, after a particularly tough fight through a thicket of holly, Thor finds their way completely blocked. There is a wall of trees in front of them, their trunks so close they almost touch. If not for the green leaves waving over his heads, and the branches reaching out to him, Thor would think this a fence in truth. Instead it is a wall not made by hands. 

He presses his palm to the nearest trunk, pushing against it a little. It holds firm, and Thor leans harder on it, resting most of his weight on the tree in front of him. There is no give at all. 

“Hello?”

The screams stopped a few minutes ago, and now a voice comes through the wall, muffled and choked. Thor steps back a pace, and glances to Loki. Loki shrugs and joins Thor at the wall. 

“Is there someone there?” Loki asks. 

“Yes!” The voice comes, now pitching high. “Yes, I’m here!”

“Have you been screaming?” Thor says. 

“I thought no one would hear me, maybe not ever.” The voice is rough.

“What happened?” Loki says. He purses his lips, reaching out to trail his hand across the trees in front of them, then feels at the seam between two trunks. There’s just enough room for him to slide the tips of his fingers between them, but he can’t reach through to the other side. Thor doubts if his larger hands could even reach as far as Loki’s do. 

There’s a faint sob from the other side of the trees, and then then sound of someone pounding a fist into the trees themselves. 

“I came out here to cut some wood for my family,” the voice says. “And then just as I was about to swing my axe, I looked around, and I was surrounded.”

Loki glances over at Thor, and Thor purses his lips. 

“It’s a long way to the village,” he says. 

“I thought this way I wouldn’t make the forest grow even closer to our houses.”

Loki scoffs a little, but quietly enough that there’s no chance that the man on the other side can hear him. 

“Is that the truth?” Thor asks. “We have heard that this forest does not abide lies.” He manages to keep the skepticism out of his voice, but just barely. 

There’s a harsh laugh from the other side of the wall, and another muffled thump.

“I swear on my wife’s beauty, it is.”

Thor nods. “You have an axe?” he asks. 

“I’ve tried to chop my way out. Nothing happens. The axe springs back towards me. I almost cut my own finger off trying.”

Loki cocks his head to one side. Thor shrugs. He loosens Mjolnir on his belt, and lets its power start to flow through him. Thor raises his hammer, hefting it in one hand. He’s about to bring it crashing down on the trees in front of him when Loki grabs his wrist. The hammer pauses; Loki and Thor stand with it balanced between them. Loki’s fingers dig into Thor’s wrist, and goosebumps stand up on Thor’s skin as Loki stares at him.

“No,” Loki whispers. “Not this way.” 

Thor glances between the hand Loki has on his arm and the wall of trees, then slowly, ever so slowly, lowers the hammer.

“What then?” he asks

“Let me try,” Loki says.

From inside the prison of trees, the woodcutter makes a little whimpering sound.

“You’re still there, right?” he asks, his voice even softer through the wood than before.

“Fear not,” Thor tells him, hanging Mjolnir back on his belt. “We simply wish to find the best way to free you, and have been discussing it.”

Loki presses his lips together, but then he speaks up as well.

“You should stand back, friend. I am not sure if this will be effective, but if it is, you will not want to be pressed against the trees.”

“You’re not going to try to cut it down, are you?” The man’s voice wavers. “Because that isn’t going to work.”

“No,” Loki agrees with him. “It isn’t.”

He closes his eyes, and as Thor watches closely, he sees the rise and fall of Loki’s chest slow, sees his mouth go slack and the creases disappear from around his eyes. Loki vanishes inside of himself, and leaves Thor standing in the wood, still and silent, with only the sound of the woodcutter’s faint whimpers to break up the noise of leaves and birds and creeping things.

Just when the silence grows unbearable, Loki stirs. He reaches out, pressing his hands flat to the trunks in front of him. There is a faint rustle above their heads, and Loki’s palms start to grow, the green of his magic leaking through his skin and dyeing his hands the color of the leaves around them. Thor shivers. The air grows thick about them, and the noises of the forest die away. 

Loki pulls his hands back, leaving only his fingertips on the wood. Both tree trunks he has touched are shaking as thought caught in a windstorm that does not touch the others around them. Thor looks up to see their branches tossing back and forth, whipped into a gale of snaking narrow twigs and fluttering leaves. It seems that the force of the wind must surely bring them down, crashing into the forest floor and decimating all in their path. Thor starts to edge backwards. 

As quickly as it started, the gale dies away. For a moment, it seems as though nothing has happened, but just as Thor is about to turn to Loki and ask if he should use Mjolnir, there is a great groaning noise. Thor focuses back on the trees. There is nothing different now, or almost nothing. The two trees Loki touched seem to have edged inwards a single inch. Thor narrows his eyes. There is another groan, and then, as he watches, the trees slide inwards one more inch. 

Beside Thor, Loki nods. Thor starts to step forwards, but Loki catches his arm. 

“Just wait,” he whispers. “The trees were reluctant to move. I would not bother them now if I were you.”

Thor raises an eyebrow, but stills. The trees continue their slow march into the circle. 

It is long minutes before there is a gap between them and the looming trunks on either side are wide enough apart that Thor can see inside the ring. But once there is that gap, he catches sight of a roughly dressed man, his eyes wide and his mouth slack. Thor smiles at him, and beckons him forwards. 

“It’s all right. We won’t hurt you.”

The man stumbles forwards, tripping over his own feet, his axe swinging wildly at his side. The opening between the trees is just wide enough for him to slip free, and he does, turning back to stare at his prison. 

“It’s all fine now,” Thor repeats, setting a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder. “We will lead you back to the path, and then you can go home.”

The man nods mutely. Thor turns to leave, but Loki stops him with the low click of his throat they’ve used for years together. 

Thor turns back to him and Loki screws up his mouth. 

“I need to do one more thing,” he says. Thor shrugs, waiting, and Loki moves forward, a little inside the ring now, to put his hands back on the trees he coaxed into motion. He rests his forehead against them for a moment, and then pulls away.

“Now we can leave,” he says. 

“What was that about?” Thor asks, as he leads them down the path of their own tracks, back towards their horses. The woodcutter is still mute between them, but Thor can hear Loki sigh well enough even at a distance. 

“I had to thank the trees, didn’t I? They don’t usually move around when you want them to.”

Thor tips his head to one side, and then nods.

“I suppose not,” he acquiesces. The ways of the seidrmenn have always been beyond him, and he does not see why Loki should have to thank a tree, but not ice or wind. It is not his to worry about, however, and he focuses on picking their way carefully back to their horses. 

When they finally arrive at the path, he turns to the woodcutter. The man shrinks back a little from him, but steadies himself when Loki joins Thor in looking at him. 

“You should go back home,” Thor starts. Loki rests a hand on Thor’s arm and stills him. 

“How did that happen to you?” he asks instead. 

Thor glares at Loki. The man is obviously traumatized, and in no shape to be answering questions. Loki ignores the glance, and the woodcutter swallows heavily. 

“The forest doesn’t like people with heaviness in their hearts,” he whispers. 

“So the forest didn’t like you because you weren’t joyful enough?” Loki asks, arching one perfect eyebrow. 

“N-no,” the woodcutter tells him. “Not that kind of heaviness. It doesn’t like deceit and lies. I must have offended it when I told my wife I wouldn’t go beyond the gate and then I did.” 

Thor frowns. It is too much like what the old woman said to be coincidence. The stories of this forest are strong – stronger and clearer than any such tales he has encountered before. He opens his mouth to ask another question, but Loki beats him to it. 

“Thank you for telling us. As my brother said, you should return home before it grows later. Your family is surely worried about you.” 

The woodcutter nods and turns towards the village. He takes a few steps forwards, and then glances back at them. 

“Don’t go further into the forest. You won’t like what you find there,” he says, and now his voice is clear as a bell ringing out in open air. 

Thor starts towards him, but Loki’s hand is still on his arm, and Loki’s fingers dig too deeply into the muscle for Thor to want to tear away. 

“Let him go, brother,” Loki whispers. “He is a villager, a no one. Let him go back to his home and his fairy stories, and his fear.”

Thor sighs and turns back towards the path, the path that leads deeper into the forest. 

***

Thor shifts again in his saddle, glancing over to one side. He can’t seem to get comfortable, and he keeps looking over at Loki, as if expecting to see the green glow of magic about him and the slow flick of Loki’s fingers as casts webs of seidr around him. Thor swallows hard, and slows his horse to a walk. 

“I’ve never seen you do anything like that before,” he says, trying to keep his voice to a growling whisper as the forest presses close about them. 

“What do you mean?” Loki asks, falling back to ride next to Thor. They’re pressed even closer together now, their arms and legs brushing every few steps. 

“I… talking to the forest like that, making it move to your will.”

“I didn’t make it do anything,” Loki tells him. 

“Then what?”

“I convinced it. I figured, if it had moved around that man in the first place, it could be persuaded to move away.”

“You convinced trees,” Thor says flatly. 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Loki snaps. “I’m not utterly useless. I do have some talents.”

“I wasn’t-” Thor starts. 

His horse rears, and he has to hang on with his knees and focus all his energy on not getting thrown. Beside him, Loki’s own horse has stopped head on in the center of the path, and will not move forward. Thor sees her standing stock still in short flashes as he fights to get his own beast under control. It’s only when he’s finally calmed his mare that he looks to the path, and can see what spooked her in the first place. 

He expects it to be a snake or turtle, some small creature in her way. Instead, there is someone standing right in front of them. It’s a young woman, barely more than a girl. She has a flower tucked behind her ear and others woven into the braid down her back. Her cheeks are rosy, and she smiles at them both, apparently not worried by the two armed men in front of her. 

“Good day to you,” she says, her voice a light chirping thing, like birdsong in summer. 

“What are you doing out here?” Thor asks. His knuckles are white on the reins. 

“That’s not a very polite greeting,” she tells him, and laughs. 

“My brother was startled,” Loki says. “Please forgive him any insult. We bid you good day.”

“Brother?” she asks, glancing between the two of them. Thor shifts a little on his saddle, then remember the mare’s fright and tries to sit still. 

“Yes, brother,” he says. 

“You are like the moon and the sun,” she tells them. “And yet…” her voice trails off, and she laughs again. 

“My lady,” Loki says, when it’s clear she won’t finish her thought. “I do hope you have not come out here alone. Not thirty minutes ago, we had to rescue one of your fellow villagers from this forest. I would hate to see you hurt in any way.”

“Sweet words,” she says, and smacks her lips. “I come here to learn about the forest.”

“That is more dangerous than you know,” Thor says, grimacing. “You should go home, little one.”

“I am not as young as all that,” her eyes flame. “And who are you, stranger, to tell me what I should do in my own home?”

Loki slides off his horse and tosses the reins to Thor, stepping up to the girl and taking her hand. 

“We mean you no offense. My brother only wishes to warn you of dangers that you may not have seen. Yet he is rough of manner and voice, with a warrior’s bluntness.”

Thor bristles, but says nothing. He does not want to see this young maiden hurt, especially if she is injured in some vain attempt to spite his warnings. She cocks her head to one side, staring at Thor and stroking a finger across Loki’s hand where he holds hers. Thor’s stomach turns over. 

“Aye,” she finally says. “I see that. Yet, young warrior, you should not be so quick to tell others what they can and cannot do. Someday you will find yourself wishing you had not given orders so quickly or so carelessly.”

Loki throws back his head and laughs. Thor’s face goes bright red. His ears burn and he clenches his fists even harder around his and Loki’s reins. Loki’s laughs turn to quiet chuckles and he finally grows quieter, though his gasps for breath are loud enough in the close forest. 

“She has the measure of you, Thor,” he finally wheezes out. “And strength fullwise.”

Thor says nothing. He bites his tongue so hard that he can taste copper in his mouth, and knows he’s drawn blood. Yet he holds back, and merely nods at Loki. The girl glances between them, then lets Loki’s hand go, plucking a flower from her hair with it. She reaches up and tucks it behind Loki’s ear. It’s pale silver, and it stands out against his dark hair. 

“A silver flower for silver words,” she says. “Take a care that they stay silver, and do not turn quick and poisonous.”

Loki’s eyes narrow, but he only bows to her in thanks. 

She dances forward on the path, her skirt flaring about her, and plucks a rose from her braid, reaching up to hand it to Thor. It is dark as the color of storms at midnight. 

“Storms belong outside you, not inside,” she says. She laughs again, and then skips down the path, leaving them both staring after her. 

“How-” Thor asks. 

“We _are_ the sons of Odin. People recognize us,” Loki says as he swings up into the saddle and takes his reins back from Thor, but even Thor can hear the doubt in his voice. 

“Of course,” Thor says, but between his smarting tongue and the warmth of the flower he still holds in his hand, he cannot bring himself to sound convincing either. 

***

The path narrows as they ride deeper into the woods. Thor falls back, his eyes on Loki, letting him lead. For his part, Loki seems eager to keep on, though he doesn’t urge his horse faster than a walk. Thor keeps his gaze fixed on Loki’s back, sets himself to examining the square of his brother’s shoulders and the arch of his spine. Loki has said nothing since the girl skipped off down the path, back towards the village. Thor, himself, however, feels questions filling up his throat and threatening to burst free from his lips. A tree branch brushes across his cheek, and Thor yelps softly. 

“Alright back there, brother?” Loki asks. 

“It was nothing,” Thor grumbles. 

“Oh really? The great Thor, crying out because of _nothing_?” 

Thor shakes himself, sitting up straighter and glaring at the trees ‘round them. 

“Don’t you think there’s something odd here?” he asks, instead of answering Loki’s taunt. 

“What, beside the forest that seems to have decided it wants to wipe all people off the face of this planet, and the trees that seem to have a mind of their own?” Loki says. Thor can’t see his face, but he imagines that Loki is wrinkling up his nose, his eyes glimmering with mocking laughter. 

“Yes, besides that, brother,” Thor says, glaring at Loki’s back. It’s strange to think that this morning, Loki was a too-comforting warmth. Now, all Thor wants is to pull him off his horse and wrestle him into submission, until Loki admits Thor has a point. It doesn’t come to that, though, because Loki glances back, his eyes narrowed.

“Of course,” he says. 

“And yet you’re just going to keep riding on down this path?” Thor asks. 

“I thought you wanted glory,” Loki says so quietly that Thor has to strain to hear it. 

“And you do not?” he shoots back. 

“What did you make of the old woman?” Loki asks. 

“Her?” Thor asks, startled. 

“I thought she was the oddest of the bunch,” Loki says. 

“More odd than the girl?”

“Much more so. Girls in forests who know more than they should are to be expected, are they not? And even beyond that, we are well known throughout the galaxy. If I were a young maid, trapped in a tiny village on a nowhere planet, I would be hanging onto the stories of your prowess for all I was worth.”

Thor’s belly fills with heat at that, and his cheeks flush. He swallows hard. 

“Kind of you,” he manages to say, though his voice sounds strangled even to his own ears. Loki laughs, truly this time. When he finishes, his giggles trailing off, he glances back at Thor. Thor blushes harder, knowing that Loki must see his flush, even in the gloom of the forest. 

“And so,” Loki continues, following a curve of the path through a dense stand of evergreens, “the old woman was the strangest of the three.”

“I thought her merely a crone who knew more than most.”

“ _Wise was the woman, she fain would use wisdom. She saw well what meant all they said in secret,_ ” Loki quotes. 

“And what makes you think she is as wise as that Guthrun was so many years ago on Midgard?” Thor throws back. “They also say _a man shall trust not the oath of a maid, nor the word a woman speaks._ ”

“And if you believe that, Sif will have your head when we get home.”

Thor blushes horribly, and shakes his head. Then, realizing that there’s no way Loki can see him from where he’s riding in front, he clears his throat.

“You know I don’t, Loki.”

“I’m only teasing, Thor. Your respect for women is just as well known as your prowess with them.”

Thor starts to give his thanks, but then realizes exactly what Loki has said. He shakes his head, and clears his throat one more time.

“No matter. I take it you think her advice was more than simply the musings of an old mind.”

“I take it as all such wisdom is. Half myth, half truth. Old wives tales always have value,” Loki tells him. 

“Even the one about you and the stallion?”

Loki goes bright red, but then shakes his head. 

“Even that. I do have a way with horses, do I not?”

Thor chuckles in agreement. Trust his brother to make even that embarrassing story sound good. Thor is so caught up in his own laughter, he’s caught off guard when Loki reins up in front of him, and his own horse stops short. 

“What-” Thor starts to ask, but swallows his words. The path has spat them out in a dim clearing, flanked on all sides by thick underbrush. There seems to be no way out; they have found the end of the trail and they will have to forge their way forward blindly. Thor pats his horse’s flank, and dismounts. 

“Look there,” Loki points in front of them, then swings down from his horse as well. Thor joins him, but at first he has no idea what Loki is waving towards. Then, he spots the opening in the largest tree. The path leads towards it, disappearing right before the darkness in its depths. 

“You think…” he starts, trailing off as he squints. 

“That we have to go in there? Yes.”

Thor huffs, turning to his horse and loosening his saddlebags. They slide off and his horse wickers at him. Thor smiles, patting it on the forelock. Beside him, Loki’s done the same thing, and now he’s slinging his own bags over one shoulder, bending to whisper to his horse. When Thor steps away, he does the same for Thor’s horse.

“There. They’ll eat and take care of themselves while we’re gone, but they’ll be back here when we return.”

Thor nods, watching as the two horses gambol off, sometimes burying up against one another. Perhaps they too are brothers, comfortable and caring in each other’s presence. He shakes his head. Unlikely, impossible, given one is a mare, and one a stallion. Far more likely that they feel something ore than sibling-like affection. 

When he swings to face the tree, he startles. Loki is close enough to him that Thor brushes against his chest. They both stumble away from one another, their eyes darting around the clearing. Thor shakes himself. There is something odd about this forest, something that is setting him on edge in a way he’s never felt before. 

Loki shivers from head to toe, then shakes his head at Thor. 

“Let’s keep going,” he says. 

Together, they head towards the gaping mouth of the tree, and the path that leads deep inside it. 

***

As one, they step under the overhanging strips of bark and vines that mark the entrance to the tree. The darkness inside eats at them, covering them up. Just inside, the path starts again. The space looms cavernous above them. Loki slides closer to Thor as the walls press in. In turn, Thor slips nearer to Loki as well, shying away from the touch of the tree walls. There are faint sounds here, moist noises that hint at creeping things sliding into secret caves. His arm brushes against Loki’s and Loki does not pull away, but instead shifts even closer. 

Thor shivers and wrinkles his nose. It is dank and damp in here, the smell of mold and stale water filling the space. Underneath his boots, the ground squelches uncomfortably, each step sinking in. It clings to him, holding tight to his feet as he tries to pull away. Their breath fills the space as the passage narrows suddenly and they are pushed together. 

Thor almost runs into one of the tree walls as the trail curves. Loki hisses at him, and Thor stumbles along. A few steps around the corner, and all light has fled. There is nothing but the rich black night of the tree’s belly. Loki stops still. 

“Can you tell which way the tunnel goes?” he asks, his voice so soft that Thor can hardly hear him. 

Thor throws out a hand in front of himself and finds empty space. 

“This way,” he says. 

Loki hisses again. 

“Quiet, Thor.”

“Why?” Thor asks, but this time he makes sure to lower his voice. “We’re inside a tree. It’s not as though anyone will hear us here.”

Even in the pitch dark that surrounds them, he can tell that Loki has turned to him. He can imagine how Loki’s face looks, his eyes wide and his mouth in a thin line, staring just as he always does when Thor has said something he considers foolish. 

“There are things in the universe who do not love people such as us, Thor.”

“And you think we’re going to run to them here?”

“I would not tempt the Norns. Has this journey not been strange enough to make you wonder at what other mysteries this forest holds?”

Thor shrugs, then realizes Loki has no chance to see the movement here. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, because Loki sniffs. 

“In any case, let’s not chance it,” he whispers. 

Thor is about to retort, but then a heavy weight lands on his shoulder. He squirms for a moment, thinking that Loki might have actually been right about the creatures that lurk in this darkness, but then a squeeze at the muscle makes him realize that Loki has a hand on his shoulder. 

“What…” he starts to ask. 

“Shh,” Loki cuts him off. “We’ve spent enough time dawdling in here. This way we won’t get separated.”

Thor huffs. Where would they go if they got separated? Straight into a wall of rotting wood, into the mold sloughing off the walls with every brush of one of his shoulders against them? Yet Loki’s fingers are warm on his shoulder, and he cannot bring himself to shrug Loki off, not when this is one of the few moments when Loki seems to want Thor’s comfort or protection, or just his presence. 

They start walking again, each step a slow thing, feeling the space in front of their faces. Two times, Loki tugs them to a halt, saying nothing, only pausing in the middle of the passage and holding Thor next to him. Thor’s skin crawls both times, his hair standing up as it always does when Loki uses Seidr in a certain way. He’s never been able to get out of Loki exactly what he’s doing, and it never happens when Loki casts an illusion, more’s the pity. But here, it is a gift, letting him know just a little more of what Loki has halted them to do. 

Loki says nothing, of course, when they’re stopped. He only squeezes tight on Thor’s shoulder. The slow, slippery sounds and faint rustles pause when they stop walking, as though they have never been, and did they not restart each time Thor and Loki start again, Thor might think he had imagined them. As it is, he wonders what creatures lurk here in the dark, and what they think of such warriors of light invading their home. He’s sure that they hope that he and Loki leave soon. 

Thor hopes so as well. The passage is much longer than he would have anticipated from the outside, and he’s starting to twitch with the need to be in the open air, close to the sky and the clouds high above the forest. Just when it begins to become unbearable, the blackness fades to grey. 

Loki’s hand drops from Thor’s shoulder as the light grows stronger, leaving the spot where it rested cold and empty. Thor rolls his shoulder, but he wants to get out of the tree badly enough that he doesn’t say anything about it. They will have plenty of time to talk when they get out of here.


	2. Chapter 2

Thor steps out of the tree, and the sudden light presses hard against his eyes. He slams his eyelids shut, feeling beside himself for Loki. The air is perfectly still all around him, and his fingers trace through the air. For long moments, he reaches nothing. Thor swings his arm faster and faster, throwing his saddlebags away to reach out more easily, but he feels only warm air. His eyes fly open. 

Loki is not beside him. 

Thor spins on his heel. There is no one there. He’s in a long, narrow, open space between two rows of trees, and Loki is nowhere to be seen. 

“Loki?” he asks. 

No one answers him. 

“Loki!” Thor calls a little louder. 

There is still no reply. Thor spins back around to the hollow tree. Its black mouth gapes before him, the air cool when Thor steps back inside its opening. He races down towards its depths, but just a few feet back, where the light has faded, he stubs his toe against something. Thor swears. When he jerks his hand up, there is a blank wall in front of him. 

The first blow of Thor’s fist against is a shock, but not an unwelcome one. He sets about to pounding against the wall of wood that covers the passageway. 

There is no hollow echo as each one of his fists lands. It is as though the passage he and Loki wandered through never existed at all. Even the wood feels different against his fingers. It is no longer rotting and molded, no longer a slimy mess of sliding fiber and dead, diseased wood. Instead it is hard and in the prime of life, as though new growth has just covered this crevice. 

Thor pounds harder against the wood, and it begins to grow slippery. For a moment he thinks he’s finally making his way to the lost passage. Then he realizes his hands are aching. Bright sparks of pain make their way up his forearms.

For a long moment, Thor just stands there, his hands pressed against the wood in front of him. Then he roars, his voice breaking wordlessly. Blood has begun to trickle across his wrists, and he has made no dent at all in the tree in front of him. Thor spins around, screaming again, and races back to the path, fleeing from the accursed tree. 

Outside, the forest is empty of his brother. Thor hardly notices that his hands are are a raw and beaten mess. He cannot care that the outside edges of his palms are bright crimson and that he has split one of his knuckles open, not when his brother has vanished away from him without a sign. 

A bird calls high above him, and Thor looks upwards, as though Loki might be hiding in the overhanging branches that form the tunnel-like path deeper into the wood. 

Loki is not there. 

There is no one there, only dead leaves blowing across the well-beaten path. Thor tries to wipe his foggy eyes. It only half helps, and his face feels wet and tight now. The momentary pause helps him notice something odd, though. 

Before the tree, the path they were following seemed hardly used, a narrow trail wending its way through the woods which only a few feet ever help to keep it clear of the plants which threaten to swallow it back up. On this side, however, the trail is wide and well established. 

The trees on either side form great columns, marching deeper into the wood away from him, and between them, the forest floor is clear of undergrowth, as though swept clean. Rocks mark the edges of the path at regular intervals, sitting between the trees in the few places where they thin out. No roots rise up, reaching out to trip the unsuspecting traveler. 

Thor sets off. 

This is a path that sees regular use. No matter what mysteries lurk at the end, at the other side, there must be someone or something. And that person has some answering to do.

Thor sets off down the path, his feet thudding down as he just barely holds himself back from running. He can’t afford to race through this and miss some sign that Loki has been here, some hint that his brother has not simply vanished into the thick, musty air of the forest. 

Five minutes later, the path is much the same as it was just outside the accursed passageway where Loki disappeared. The trees have grown a bit larger. Now, their wide trunks are not columns but walls themselves, boxing Thor in and driving him forwards, leading him on and on. He couldn’t divert from his path if he wanted, couldn’t turn away to wander through the trackless woods. 

Thor clenches his fists at his sides, blood oozing between his knuckles. Ahead of him, the path narrows until there is just room for one person to squeeze between wide tree trunks. He edges through sideways, his shoulders just a bit too broad to let him through normally. 

On the other side, the path opens out to a huge clearing. Above it, branches arch up to form a green roof, vaulted like that of a great hall. In the center of the clearing, one huge tree looms upwards. 

It is ancient, gnarled branches and roots reaching out from it to dominate all space around. Its trunk is wider than four men standing abreast, a hulking mass of wood that fills even the space it does not physically occupy. 

Right in the middle of the trunk, a few feet up from the forest floor, branches and twisted roots wrap together. They twine around themselves to form a seat. It is a great throne, fashioned out of living wood and ancient growth. 

On the throne sits a woman.

She is neither young nor old. Her face is unlined, but her eyes seem pools of clear water that have been working their way through the bedrock of the world for eons uncounted. Her hair is stark white, but it hangs over her shoulder in a luxurious plait. She is clad only in leaves, and her body is thin and worn by countless years, yet lush as a maid’s, with high breasts and wide hips. 

Thor freezes as she opens her mouth to speak. 

***

“Thor, son of Odin,” she says. 

Thor finds his knees buckling, as though he is about to kneel, but he forces himself to stay upright. For a moment, his muscles scream, and then the pressure goes away, and he stands straight on his own. 

“Where is my brother?” Thor says, clenching his fists harder. 

“Have you lost him?” 

“You should know!” Thor insists. He sets his hand on top of Mjonir, blood smearing on the head as he stalks a little closer to her throne. 

“Should I? Have we met before?” Her voice is the sound of rustling leaves, the laughter of running water. 

“This path led straight to you,” Thor insists. Everything inside him screams that he should climb the steps to her throne and force her to tell him the truth, force her to admit to her crimes against his brother. 

“All paths lead to me in this forest. That is saying nothing more than you have entered my domain. Without my permission, I should add. Why have you come to me?”

Thor growls deep in his throat. He stalks back and forth in front of the great tree, trying to walk away the temptation to charge at her. On one end of the clearing is a pool full of dark water, its surface glassy and smooth, its edge bordered by a stone lip. On the other side is a tumbled outcropping of rock, and when Thor draws close, he’s startled by bright eyes that stare out at him from the underbrush next to it. 

He stumbles backward away from the stag that slowly walks out into the clearing. It halts next to the outcropping, tilting its antlered head. Its eyes are brighter even than they seemed when he first saw them, staring at him with cool regard. Thor squares his shoulders, turning back to the woman on the throne and glaring at her. 

“Come now, son of Odin. It is not so difficult a question.”

“You have not answered mine,” Thor replies, trying to keep his voice level. 

She laughs, the sound silvery, like that of falling rain. 

“A point to you, Odinson. You are correct. Shall we make a deal?”

“What kind of deal?” Thor asks. 

“Nothing too onerous, or at least, it should not be a challenge to one such as you.”

“Say your price, and get on with it,” Thor insists. 

“So impatient. Well then, son of Odin Allfather, I ask only this. Answer my question with truth, all the truth you can, and I will answer yours in return. That is my price. Honesty, and nothing more.”

Thor shakes his head. It is too close to what the old woman told them just when they walked into this accursed forest so much earlier today. Yet if that is the price that he has to pay for finding out where Loki has vanished to, then he will pay it. It is not so hard, after all. Thor Odinson does not lie. 

“I accept your price, lady.”

“Then it is set,” she declares. A shiver runs up Thor’s spine. Cold wind runs through the clearing for an instant, all the leaves on the trees rustling. The stag paws at the forest floor. 

“It is set,” he echoes. 

“Well, then, Odinson, tell me why you have come into my forest.”

“It’s no secret,” Thor says. “Your forest is swallowing up that city out there. We came, my brother and I, to find out why, and to save the people of the town.”

For a single, crystal second, the whole wood seems to freeze. Even the birds stop singing in the trees, and the wind dies. On her throne, the woman freezes as well, her eyes wide and her lips narrow. 

“Lie,” she hisses. 

“I tell no lie!” Thor insists. 

“You do. I should have expected nothing less from Odin’s blood. Liar.” Her voice rises with every word, until she is screaming. Now her voice is nothing like the sound of a summer stream. Rather it is the winter wind, the scream of a falcon before it attacks, the furor of a spring flood. Thor loosens his hammer in his belt. 

Before he can pull it free, however, he finds himself being driven backwards. The stag has charged across the clearing, and its antlers have found purchase on his armor. Thor stumbles backwards. The stag pushes harder, and Thor finds, for the first time in his life, that he cannot stop an enemy’s advance. 

He digs his heels in, but the stag comes on without pause. It foams at the mouth, its eyes wild and rolling. The woman keeps screaming on her throne, her calls of “liar, liar” filling his ears. Thor grabs the stag’s antlers and finally gets some leverage. 

It is too little, too late. His heel catches on the edge of the pool and he topples backwards. The stag shakes its head back and forth, throwing him free of its antlers. Thor falls free. 

The water is icy cold, and Thor sinks fast. It fills his eyes, pitch dark, just as black as the inside of the tree earlier. His armor weighs him down, and even as he struggles to reach the surface, he sinks deeper. There seems to be no end to the pool.

Thor thrashes back and forth, trying to free himself of the water. The tiny flickers of light from the surface are disappearing as he sinks even deeper, and his lungs are starting to ache. He can’t breathe. There is no air. Mjolnir herself pulls him downward, and he cannot free her from his belt in order to loft himself in the air and escape this death trap. 

There is still no sign of the bottom, and Thor can’t hold his breath for much longer. This cannot be his end, drowning in a pool of water on some forsaken planet, sentenced to death for some lie he did not tell. He is Thor Odinson, and this cannot be his end. 

He takes a deep breath and water floods into his mouth. It fills him up, and suddenly he feels as though he is suspended in the pool. He is no longer falling, but neither can he climb to the surface. He is surrounded by endless night, water filling his mouth, his nose, his lungs. Yet he is no longer drowning. Instead, the water seeps deeper into him, invading every part of him, insidious.

A glimmer of light appears in front of him in the pool. For a moment, Thor thinks that he has gotten turned around and has somehow floated up to the surface, but then he realizes that cannot be. The light in front of him is golden, soft and diffuse like the sunset glow of a summer day on Asgard. It spreads from a point in the blackness in front of him, until there is a glowing circle of light. 

Thor stares, and stares, held fast in wetness that feels nothing like water now. The center of the light clears, and there, in front of him, he stands. He sees himself on Vanaheim, Loki at his side, fighting a horde of invaders. Thor is surrounded by enemies unnumbered, more even that he can easily fight off, and they reach out to him and claw at his broken skin, scratching long stripes of red into it. Their hands tear at his face. As Thor watches, the image of himself falls to its knees. 

Then, just as it seems all is lost, Loki appears. His hands weave around Thor in short jerking motions, his eyes narrowed in concentration. For a moment, nothing happens. Then Thor vanishes from sight.

The monsters that surrounded him howl in frustration, turning frantically from side to side. They scatter in every direction, screaming out their anger. For a few moments everything is still. Then Thor and Loki reappear at one side of the field, Thor cradled in Loki’s arms, his blood smeared across Loki’s jerkin, his hands tangled in Loki’s hair as he holds tightly to his brother. 

The scene fades, and then resolves again.

He’s in the practice yard on Asgard, where he has spent so many years of his life. Around him, friends and fellow warriors gather. They pat him on the back, fawning over him, adoring him. For a moment, that’s all Thor notices. But then, in the corner, he sees Loki sitting against one of the balustrades, his lips tight and his eyes dark. Thor says nothing of Loki’s rescue, nothing of the way his brother saved him again, as he always does. Instead, he takes the honors heaped on him, grinning at every pat on the back. Loki slips away. 

The scene disappears. 

Thor cannot move, not where he is, caught in this deep darkness, but he wants to squirm. Yet before he can do more than attempt to twitch, the darkness in front of his grows bright again. 

This time, the scene is that of a battlefield. Around it lie the bodies of the fallen. They are ripped open, their innards trailing across the bloody grass. Some of them have been shattered, crushed by heavy blows. Vultures cry as they circle high above the field. 

In the center of it all, Thor stands exulting. His arms are raised in victory. His face is bloody, but this time it’s clear none of the blood is his own. Instead, he rejoices in his foes’ deaths. All around him lies horror and destruction, but he glories in it, delighting in the violence that surrounds him. As Thor - the real Thor - watches, his counterpart turns to smile at a raven pecking the eyes from a fallen enemy. 

The scene fades away again. 

This time, Thor is shaking, held tight in the frigid water. He isn’t cold, though, or not solely. Instead he shakes from the horror of the sight, from seeing himself. He remembers that battle, remembers how he had been lauded afterward. He remembers the feeling of standing in that field, glorying in destruction and never thinking of the dead lying all about him in already rotting piles. 

Thor tries to close his eyes as the darkness grows bright again, but his eyes are held open by the water around him. He cannot even blink, forced to watch as scene after of scene of his own victories stream past. In each of them, he notices Loki standing by, unnoticed, un-appreciated. In each of them, he sees himself rejoicing in the terror of his own coming with no eye for the cost, with no care for how he hurts those around him. 

It goes on and on and on, the visions of his lust for glory coming faster and faster. He has never fought for those around him because he wanted to help. He has never cared for anything but his own glory. It is all he can see now. Thor tries to scream, but more water fills his mouth. His vision goes dark. 

***

Loki holds his eyes closed as he steps out of the tunnel through the tree. Thor pulled away from his hand, and he has no doubt that his brother is probably blinking away the brightness of the forest. Loki himself opens his eyes a little more slowly, trying to give himself time to get used to the new day. 

The forest is quiet around him. They have emerged onto a long path leading down between two heavy rows of trees. Loki eyes their perfect rows, taking in the way that they march like soldiers down away from him. They were obviously planted by someone, probably the same person who made the path through the tree, the same person whose presence Loki has felt ever since he and Thor found themselves in the clearing on the other side of the tree. 

He turns to Thor to tell him that. 

Thor isn’t there. Loki pauses, glancing from side to side. His brother isn’t there. He turns back to the entrance to the tree, to the place where he first felt Thor slip from his grasp. Thor isn’t there either. He is nowhere to be found. Not in the shadow of the heavy branches hanging over the path. Not leaning against the tree’s silvery bark. Not laughing at how wide Loki’s eyes must be right now. He is nowhere. 

Loki swallows hard. 

It’s just like Thor to pull away from him at the last minute and get lost inside the maze of Seidr that fills the tree. It’s just like to Thor to get drawn into the webs that hang thick in the air they’ve just left. Thor has never been able to sense anything beyond what he can see and hear. 

Loki goes back to the entrance to the tree, holding one hand up to it as he reaches the opening in the wood that yawns like a black mouth. Something feels different here, something has changed. 

On the other side of the tree, Loki could feel the passage winding away in front of them, leading down, and down into the depths of the wood, and drawing him and Thor towards some sort of beating heart. On this side he can’t feel anything at all. There is no sign that this is anything more than a crack in a normal tree. All he can find is wood and moss, mold and lichen. There is no Seidr in the air that leads the way back to where he and Thor left their horses. 

Loki steps inside the tree. It’s even darker on this side, immediately pitch black. There is still nothing more than wood surrounding him. He is hardly surprised when he reaches the blank back wall of the passageway only a few feet inside. It is cool to touch, and just as empty of magic as the rest of the tree. 

There is no sign of Thor. 

Loki leans and rest his forehead against the smooth back of the tree’s inner depths for a single instant. His brother is nowhere to be found here. If he has been swallowed up in the forest’s magic, there is no way that Loki will find him in this dead place. Loki turns around. 

The green light of the forest beckons to him as he steps back out of the tree. Loki closes his eyes against the open air and reaches out with his senses. All around him, Seidr gathers in thick knotted strands, the arteries of some hulking beast. It sits crouched, the path upon which Loki stands its heaving breast and whatever lies at the end of it, the heart of the beast. Loki touches one strand of Seidr with his fingertips, and it hums, vibrating like a plucked string. All around him, the other strands respond, and Loki realizes that the forest is one beast in truth. All the trees are indeed connected to each other in this web of magic. 

He sets off down the path. 

Each step brings him deeper into the forest’s innards, and Loki pauses several times to gauge where inside the forest he stands. Each time, he finds himself reaching out for Thor through his magic, trying to find his brother’s brightness shining out against the dark, throbbing veins of the forest. 

Loki cannot find him. 

Thor has never been hidden from Loki before. All their lives, Loki has been as aware of Thor’s presence as he is aware of the existence of his own arm. It’s been a comfort, a nagging annoyance, a frustration, and a reassurance, but never has Thor simply been gone, as though he never existed. Loki cannot even feel the hole in the magic of this place that shows where Thor should be found. 

His teeth are on edge. 

Loki stumbles as the path rises a little underneath his feet and lets go of his second sight, focusing on the visual world around him. In front of him, two trees block the end of the path. Between them runs a narrow slot, and Loki squeezes through it carefully. He has to hold back a desperate chuckle as he imagines Thor here. His brother wouldn’t even be able to fit face forward. 

Loki’s laughter dies when he comes out the other side. In front of him, in a broad clearing in the wood, is a Tree. It is the heart he has been searching for, the looming presence that all the veins of magic he feels lead towards. Its gnarled branches are heavy with leaves, but a few of them have faded already in the autumn chill, crowning the clearing in red-gold.

In front of the tree, or rather on it, sits a man, or something like a man. 

He is tall and broad, with arms as thick as those tree branches that surround him, and his shoulders speak of hard labor. Yet he lounges back on a couch made of living wood and moss, lazing back at his ease. When Loki meets his eyes, they are made of green fire. 

“Loki, trickster of Asgard,” the man says, and there is nothing of welcome in his voice. 

***

Loki says nothing. He only stares at the man-creature in front of him, trying to ignore the pulsing strands of Seidr that swirl about him and his tree. They wrap around the man’s bare chest and green-clad legs, then gather around his spidery fingers. The man props himself up on on elbow, raising an eyebrow as Loki remains quiet. 

“What, trickster? Cat got your tongue?” 

Loki forces himself to laugh, shaking his head. 

“You know me. Thus you know that I’ve never been at a loss for words.”

The man laughs too, the sound inhumanly cool, and around him the forest shudders with laughter as well. 

“So you choose not to speak. So strange, given how willing your brother was. Perhaps you are worried that you will fail at my test, just as he has only moment ago.”

Loki bites his lip hard, trying to hold back the words that threaten to spill from them. He can’t quite catch them all, though. 

“You think I am surprised? Thor could never pass a test set by the likes of you,” he says. 

“Oh, trickster,” the man sighs. “How can you be so learned, and so yet foolish?”

Loki bristles, but bites the inside of his lip to try to calm himself. The pain is sharp enough to let him focus, and stop him from retorting. Instead he stares at the man with wide eyes. 

“You think me learned?” he asks. 

“I think you blind. You see much with that second sight, looking outwards, but you cannot see inside yourself, nor look inside your brother’s heart.”

“You think you know more about Thor than I?” Loki scoffs, clenching his fists at his sides. 

“False. False, always false. You know not the meaning of truth.”

“You can’t be a liar without understanding truth,” Loki protests. 

“Prove it to me,” the man says. 

“You’ve already decided you know me,” Loki says, bitterness filling his mouth and souring his words. “How can I change your mind?”

“You think all are so intractable as your father?” The man asks. His long white braid falls over his shoulder, and his bare chest heaves as he chuckles. 

“How dare you!” Loki exclaims, actually shaking as he holds himself back from rushing the man. 

“Calm yourself, trickster. Answer me true, and I will leave you be. Why did you come to my forest?”

Loki laughs. 

“Is this where Thor failed? Did he lie about why we are here?”

“Answering a question with a question is not the truth,” the man tells him. 

“Then here is your answer. Glory, of course. Like always. All he wants is glory, and I’m along for the ride. What would father say if I let him get lost in some forest?”

“Liar. False even to yourself, and you lie again. You cannot even see your own heart for all your lies”

Loki finally cannot hold himself back. He starts towards the man, his eyes narrowed. 

“It will be your downfall,” the man calls out to him. 

Loki doubles over, sudden laughter catching himself off guard. 

“I hope so,” he chokes out. “I hope I’ll drown in it, and everyone else around me. That’ll be something to see.”

The man’s eyes flash, and suddenly he is on his feet, a hand out in front of himself. Loki is hurled backward across the clearing. He reaches out around him, trying to catch hold of the strands of Seidr that are forcing him onward, but it’s all in vain. He tumbles through the air, tossed off his feet. 

The first splash of water against him is ice cold. Loki sinks fast, pulled underneath by the weight of the water filling up his robes and pulling at his armor. He claws out with his magic and his hands, but all around him there is nothingness. No magic, no air, no light. There is nothing left around him but darkness and water. 

Loki flails, trying to swim to the surface, trying to _see_. 

There is nothing there to flail against. He sinks farther and farther, until even the faint hint of green light has disappeared from above him and he’s lost in the dark. Loki squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to breath, but his lungs have started to ache. He hasn’t stopped falling, and there seems to be no end to this pit, no end to this hole in the universe. His chest aches even more now. 

When his mouth opens, water floods into him. It rushes inside him, filling him up, and his eyes fly open. All around him, the water fills with light. Loki gasps again, but his chest no longer feels as though it will split open. He isn’t falling anymore either. Instead, he’s caught, suspended in nothingness, and the light around him swirls like a living thing. 

Loki tries to reach out and touch it, but his hands stay at his sides, almost frozen in the clear water around him. In front of him an image starts to form. At first, Loki can’t tell where it is. The room he sees might be any palace anywhere in the known universe. But then two boys slip through it. 

They’re almost men, chests starting to broaden and hair already braided back like warriors. But they are not yet full grown, not burdened with the cares of the world. Thor is laughing about something, his head tossed back and his eyes bright. One of his arms is slung across Loki’s shoulders, holding Loki close to his side. The young Loki looks over at Thor, smiling. 

Hanging in the strange, empty space of the pool, Loki looks at himself, and tries to bite the inside of his lip. He tries to chew at his mouth, tries to remind himself of what the day he’s watching must have felt like, but he’s frozen in the water, unable to even blink. Instead, he has to watch as his younger self looks adoringly up at Thor, and presses against Thor’s side. 

Loki would breath a sigh of relief if he could when the scene finally fades away. The water does not grow dark again, however. Instead, the silvery light all around him swirls more frantically, like a wild thing caught in a cage, held back by forces it cannot, nor wants to understand. As its stirring reaches a fever-pitch, a circle of blackness appears just in front of Loki. 

The circle grows and grows, until its higher than Loki’s head and as wide as four strong men standing shoulder to shoulder. 

In the depths of the darkness comes firelight. Loki’s eyes slowly adjust to the contrast between the silver water and the dark scene. He struggles once again in vain against the water when he sees what it is showing him. 

This time, Thor and Loki sit side-by-side next to a small fire. Their armor is off, laid out on tumbled rocks in one corner, and their shirts hang on a makeshift rack just next to the fire. They both lean back against a mossy rock, legs spread and faces smeared with dirt. 

Loki remembers this day. 

He and Thor had been caught out high in the woodlands on Aelfheim while hunting. They’d raced across meadows and copses until they found the dry cave that he can see in front of him. A flick of Loki’s wrist had sparked the fire that now crackles in front of them, and Thor had insisted on drying their shirts naturally instead of having Loki dry them quickly with Seidr. At the time, Loki had huffed, thinking that Thor didn’t trust him to do his work, but now, he catches how delighted Thor looks at their situation. He lounges back with an arm around Loki’s waist, pulling a pouting Loki close to him. 

As Loki watches his younger self, he sees himself soften into Thor’s arms, his eyelids drooping. Thor grins down at him, and Loki snuffles as his head flops onto Thor’s bare shoulder. 

It’s coming back to him now, the way that Thor had held him all night, and they’d woken up slumped against one another, happy and warm, and smelling all of woodsmoke. Loki reaches out to the illusion once again. This time, though, his chest aches with being so far away, with the fact that he has no idea where Thor is now, with the fact that he has not settled like that against Thor in years, so calmly and so carefree. 

The illusion fades and changes at the same time, and when the swirling mists of the water clear, Loki cannot believe he makes no noise, even though he knows the water stops him. There in front of him, he sees the bedroom from their first night here. He remember telling the innkeeper they only needed one room, laughing to himself about how it will annoy Thor. 

When he’d settled into bed next to Thor that night, he’d had to bury his face in his pillow to stop himself from pressing up against Thor, working himself up to his side. Thor had felt so good against him, warm and welcoming. Loki had found himself sliding closer throughout the night. 

He’d woken time and time again to find himself facing Thor, one of his hands tangled in Thor’s hair and the other pressed flat against Thor’s chest, feeling the beat of his heart. Loki had pulled his hand from Thor’s chest, but he hadn’t been able to let Thor’s golden hair slide from between his fingers. He’d stroked it, sighing as he’d forced himself to stay away from Thor even in the dark and the quiet. 

Now, watching himself curl against Thor, Loki wishes that tears could slip from his eyes and down his cheeks. He wishes he could reach out and shake himself, and say how stupid he is. His eyes smart, his chest tightens, and then all at once, everything goes dark. 

***

Thor wakes up with a start. He’s flat on his back at the edge of the pool, staring up into the sky. The leaves flutter above him in a light breeze. Thor takes a few heaving breaths. Then a new sound joins that of the forest around him. Someone next to him lets out a hacking, rasping cough.

Thor sits up all at once, and his vision goes dark. He blinks and blinks and blinks, and finally the world comes swimming back to him in all its green glory.

Loki lies in the grass beside him.

Thor reaches out to him, then pauses, his hand hovering just above Loki’s shoulder. Loki’s eyes are still closed as he coughs, and Thor does not want to startle him. The question of what he should do is taken away soon enough, when Loki’s eyes fly open and he sits up as well, knocking Thor’s hand away. 

“Thor?” he rasps out. 

Thor takes his shoulder without hesitation this time. He looks Loki over, trying to see if the cough is the only thing troubling him. There are no open wounds or even bruises on Loki’s pale skin. He meets Loki’s eyes, green but nothing like the forest around them. 

Loki is in his arms before either of them can say anything else. Thor isn’t sure which of them moved first, but now they’re kneeling next to the stone lip of the pool, pressed against one other. Loki is warm, and Thor realizes that the both of them are dry. It’s a fleeting thought, however, lost in the sweetness of knowing that he has Loki back, that nothing has taken Loki away from him forever. 

He presses his face into Loki’s neck, breathing in the smell of Loki’s hair and the scent of leather than always hangs about him. Loki’s hands move over his back, tangling with Thor’s hair and stroking it, just as he does sometimes when he’s most relaxed. Those are the moments Thor loves, and this is no exception. He pulls Loki even closer, wishes they could melt into each other. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispers. The words slip out before his pride can hold them back, but once they’re spoken, Thor knows how much he’s been aching to let them loose.

“You did,” Loki said. “We both did, at least for a little while.”

Thor pulls away just enough to see his face. There is no mocking laughter in Loki’s eyes, nothing but quiet desperation. Thor cups the back of his neck, pressing their foreheads together. 

“Well we’re found again.” 

The words whisper between them, hanging in the few inches that separate their faces.

“Are we? What happened to you?” Loki asks.

“You were gone when I left that accursed tree,” Thor growls. His shoulders tense just thinking about it. He’s about to pull away from Loki, but Loki’s hand slides deeper into his hair, stroking it slowly, and Thor relaxes into his arms. 

“And there was only an empty pathway in front of you?” Loki whispers. “It was the same for me. You were just gone. I couldn’t even feel your magic.”

“I tried to find you,” Thor says. He starts to pull his hand away from Loki’s neck, to show Loki the cuts he’d earned from his futile search, but then he stops. 

The cuts are gone. They’ve vanished completely, as though they never were. Loki raises an eyebrow that Thor feels more than sees given how closely they’re pressed together. 

“I had… my hands… they’re healed now.” 

Loki nods minutely. 

“That’s not just a pool of water,” he says, then laughs a little. “Obviously.”

“What happened when you got into this clearing?” Thor asks quietly. “You found your way here, just like I did. What did she say to you?”

“She?” Loki asks. 

“The woman on the throne!” This time Thor starts away in truth, swinging to where the throne and the great tree stand in the center of the clearing. 

Only the tree remains. 

The throne has vanished, as though it never was. The twisted branches and roots that formed its base have straightened and relaxed, twining around the tree in shapes and figures that form nothing more than the base of the tree. The rocks on the other side of the clearing hide no stag. There is no one else there but them. 

Beside him, Loki has turned as well, staring at the tree with wide eyes. His lips narrow and he shuts his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, his mouth is still thin. 

“There’s no one else here,” he confirms. 

“Where did they go?” Thor asks. 

“They? I saw only one.”

“I found a stag and a woman. I failed her test,” Thor admits, his face falling. 

“I did as well,” Loki says after only a single moment. “Although I suppose that was expected. I am a liar after all.”

Thor swings to face him, taking Loki’s shoulders and squeezing them as he stares straight into Loki’s eyes. 

“We both are. But I more than you. I lie even from myself. I saw that here, when I was… caught in that pool.”

“So did I,” Loki says bitterly. 

Thor cups the back of Loki’s neck, but then slides his hand around so that he can stroke one of Loki’s cheekbones with his thumb.

“I think…” he starts, “I think I have hurt you in the past. I think I have not treated you with the respect you deserve, nor let myself think of your place in my life.”

Loki shuts his eyes, but he does not pull away. Instead, he tips his head a little, pressing his cheek into Thor’s hand. 

“I have done the same,” Loki says, voice little more than a whisper. “Thor… I have spent so long pretending I didn’t want to be close to you, but at the same time trying to draw you in, and keep you by me. I do not think after that I can continue to do so.” He waves a hand at the pool of water. 

“Then don’t,” Thor says, not sure what he’s asking for, but knowing that they cannot keep lying to one another. 

***

The first press of Loki’s lips against his palm is not as much of a shock as it should be. Loki turns farther, until he can press his face into Thor’s hand, and kisses him once again, a soft push of lips against him that belies the way Thor can feel him shaking. 

“Is this what you’ve been lying about?” Thor manages to say. 

Loki says nothing, but edges closer, drawing Thor’s hands along with him. He’s close enough now that Thor can feel his body-heat once again. Thor’s hand caresses Loki’s cheek before he can even think to order it to do so, and Loki smiles slightly. 

“Maybe. Is it what you lied about?” he finally answers.

Thor laughs. 

“I’ve never lied about this, not to myself,” he says, and realizes that it’s true. He’s lied about his thirst for glory, lied about how much he needs Loki at his side, but even while sharing that bed with Loki only last night, he hadn’t lied about this to himself. 

“Never?” Loki asks. 

Thor shakes his head. Then he pulls Loki the rest of the way in, back into an embrace with their kneeling legs tangled together. 

“Do you want to be true now?” he whispers in Loki’s ear, and knows he asks something far more important. 

“Yes,” Loki’s answer is instantaneous. 

Thor takes both Loki’s cheeks in his hands, cupping them as he looks into Loki’s eyes. He doesn’t know what he hopes to see there - he’s never been able to tell when his brother is lying - but the emerald green glow of Loki’s eyes is brighter than he has seen in a long time, and that has to be enough for now. 

Loki’s lips are as soft as he has always imagined when he presses his own against them. It’s a light kiss, as brief as the one Loki gave his palm moments ago, but it is taste enough that Thor cannot imagine ever getting enough of Loki’s mouth. Loki whimpers, and presses forward, cupping the back of Thor’s head and deepening the kiss. 

Thor groans as Loki parts his mouth and welcomes him inside. He keeps his eyes open, staring into Loki’s own as he traces the inside of Loki’s mouth with his tongue, caressing his teeth and lips and his tongue and every part of Loki that he has never gotten to feel before. Loki makes soft noises, giving as good as he gets, and Thor finds himself growing far too warm. He pulls away enough to breathe, to speak in a rough growl. 

“More?” he asks. 

Loki laughs, breathless. 

“Always more.”

“Greedy,” Thor laughs, and for a moment he worries that he’s gone too far. But Loki’s eyes sparkle. 

“For you? Of course. Didn’t I say I’d been lying to myself about how much I need this?”

Thor doesn’t mention that Loki never quite admitted it, because he’s too busy tugging at the ties that hold Loki’s armor tight to his body. Loki’s quick fingers work his own off in tandem, and then they’re left in only their soft arming clothes and tunics. Thor pulls off the padding that cushions his armor and his tunic all at once, and kneels there, bare chested, as Loki stares at him. 

Loki reaches out and traces the line between Thor’s pecs, then cups one in his hand, hefting it a little and tweaking the nipple. Thor flushes, shivering as Loki grins delightedly. 

“Lie down, brother,” Loki whispers, and Thor shivers at that word, at the reminder that this is _Loki_ he’s doing this with. Loki, who he has known every day of his life; Loki, who is bound to him with blood and long years together; Loki, who is his brother.

“You like that?” Loki murmurs. “I did not think you would. I thought you too noble for such things, Thor.”

“Too noble for love?” Thor asks, even as Loki pushes him onto his back and throws a leg across his hips to straddle him. Loki shakes his head. 

“Only you, Thor. Only you could take something like this and make it wonderful and pure and beautiful.”

“I need do no such thing,” Thor gasps, as Loki caresses his sides. “It is already so. I am only helping you finish seeing the truth.”

Loki smiles down at him, no mocking left in his gaze. 

“Was this another thing you learned not to lie about?”

Thor shakes his head, biting back a moan as Loki presses their hips together.

“No. I learned to treat you with the honor you deserve. And you deserve it all, Loki,” Thor whispers. “I learned how arrogant I was.”

Loki pauses in his exploration of Thor’s chest and hips. He stares at Thor for a long moment, then nods. 

When his hands start to move again, there is a new desperation in them, a new desire. He yanks open Thor’s trousers.

Thor grabs Loki’s hips, pulling him down so he can feel how hard Thor is. Loki gasps. He’s as hard as Thor himself, his cock filling up every available space in his tight leather trousers. Thor picks at their laces, pulling them open and watching greedily as Loki’s cock springs out. It is the first time he has ever been able to look at his brother this openly, to gaze at him and fill himself up with the pleasure of it. 

Loki’s hands are back on Thor’s chest, and he pinches hard at Thor’s nipples when Thor takes hold of his dick for the first time. Thor squirms, the slight pain of the Loki’s nails better than anything he’s felt so far. Loki bites his lip. 

“You like this?” he asks. 

Thor swallows hard against the way his mouth is watering as he looks at Loki’s cock. 

“More than anything,” he whispers. “Loki… Loki, let me suck you. Please.” Te tries to stop himself from begging, but all his barriers are down and he wants it so much. He wants to make his brother laugh and smile and to hear those little moans of pleasure from before. He wants to be the one to bring Loki pleasure. He’s greedy for it, as greedy as he’s always been for glory. Only this is a clean feeling, the desire to bring pleasure, and it takes hold of him like a fire takes a pile of long-dead wood.

Loki looks down at him with wide eyes. Then he nods yes, sliding forward until he’s straddling Thor’s shoulders. His cock bobs in front of Thor, and Thor has to swallow again. 

Loki tastes of sweat and leather. Thor only traces the tip of his cock with his tongue at first. He wants so badly to swallow Loki down all at once, but at the same time, he wants to draw this out, to hold Loki close to him for as long as Loki will allow it. Loki tips forward when Thor finally sucks the tip of his cock into his mouth. He’s on hands and knees, kneeling over Thor as Thor slowly feeds himself the rest of Loki’s cock. 

“Oh gods,” Loki groans. 

Thor moans in response, his mouth full. He fondles Loki’s balls, and then cups his ass in his other hand, pulling Loki forward so that he starts fucking Thor’s mouth slowly. Loki is thick, but not as long as Thor himself. He stretches Thor’s lips wide, but slides perfectly into Thor’s throat, and each stuttering thrust of his hips drives him deeper. Soon all Thor has to do is suck and breathe with each thrust, because Loki is fucking his mouth all on his own. 

“T-touch yourself,” Loki gasps out. “I want you to come too,” 

Thor would laugh if he could, laugh for joy. Instead he reaches down and cups his own cock through his smallclothes. He moans around Loki’s cock, shaking at the first touch of his hand. Above him, Loki curses. 

Loki’s thrusts are getting more erratic, his balls drawing up as he drives himself into Thor’s mouth. Thor pushes his smallclothes down, and fists his cock against his stomach, staring into Loki’s face, watching as Loki pants and curses. Then Loki freezes, and the first splash of his come hits the back of Thor’s throat. Thor pushes him a little away with his free hand, but stops Loki before he can pull away entirely. Instead he catches Loki’s come inside his mouth, wanting to taste it. 

That’s what finally sets Thor off as well. He spills across his belly, the spurts of his come reaching all the way up his chest to where his nipples are still pink from Loki’s nails. 

They finally roll apart, panting, and Thor finds he has a little bit of Loki’s come running down his chin. He licks it away while staring at his brother, and Loki’s eyes gleam like fire. 

Before Thor realizes what Loki means to do, Loki is lapping up Thor’s come from his stomach, tracing muscle and sinew to get at all of it. Thor’s cock jerks even as it softens, and a single bead of come falls from the head. Loki licks that up as well, cleaning Thor as thoroughly as possible. When he’s done, he makes as though to sit up. Thor shakes his head, and grabs Loki, gathering him close. 

“Happy?” he whispers into Loki’s hair as Loki relaxes against him. 

“Happier than I have ever been,” Loki murmurs back, and Thor believes him. 

***

They are only there for a few moments before Thor hears a rustle in the grass beside them. He doesn’t bother to sit up until two faces come into view above them. Then he starts up, trying to pull his trousers up across his soft cock. Loki doesn’t bother, only lazes back on one elbow, his body all on display. 

It takes a few moments before Thor recognizes their new companions. It is the maiden from earlier, flanked by the woodcutter they rescued at the beginning of their time in the wood. 

“Hail and well met, Thor,” the man says. “I hope my antlers did not cause you any damage.”

“Your?” Thor splutters. “Your antlers?”

“Mine.”

“You tried to drown me!” he exclaims. 

“No. You would only have drowned if you had failed to admit the horror of your lies, and held fast to them.”

“You’re the king from the throne,” Loki interjects. Thor looks round at him, but Loki only purses his lips as he does when he wants Thor not to ask about something. 

“Right again,” the woodcutter says.

“And me?” The maid asks. Her voice is like birdsong, just as it was before, but now Thor catches the sound of wind and water deep in it. He pulls himself up to stand, and this time he bows without any prompting. 

“My lady,” he says. “I did not recognize you earlier.”

“Thor?” Loki asks. 

“She was sitting here on the throne when I first came to the clearing. She looked a little different, yes, but I believe it was her.”

“So you two rule here?” Loki asks them, rising to stand next to Thor.

They look at one another, and then both laugh. 

“No one rules here but truth itself. Yet perhaps, as you understand the world, you might say that we are the guardians of this place.”

“And you’re the ones that can help that town?” Loki asks. 

The woman smiles at him, her eyes soft. 

“So you still desire to help them? Even after you’ve learned what you both truly want in the world? Answer true.”

“I do,” Thor says, and for once, it does not feel a performance. “I’ve spent so long only doing what was right because I knew I would be applauded for it. But here… here I think it is different.”

“And you, trickster?” The man asks, staring at Loki with eyes that Thor recognizes as that of the stag. 

“They once held truth paramount. They once had some of the greatest libraries across the realms. I would have them find truth and knowledge again,” Loki says carefully. 

“A truth indeed,” the maiden laughs. “Though, trickster, you use the truth as carefully as you use lies.”

“Would you expect anything else of me?” Loki asks. 

“No, I would not. As long as you understand what you do, then I cannot fault your honesty.”

Thor wonders at that, but says nothing. He has no desire to go back into that pool, and perhaps this time drown in truth. He cannot, not when he finally has Loki at his side and in his heart. 

“So is that what you would ask of us? You have passed our trials, where no one else has. You have faced your own lies, and overcome them. You might have any boon within our power, and that power is far greater than you could guess. You do not have to beg for the survival of that small town, if you do not want.”

“They are still why we came,” Loki says. Thor nods. 

“We’ve already gotten a reward beyond any that you could give us. And after all, we’ve only got that because the town needed help.”

“Another truth,” the man laughs. 

“Turn to the setting sun,” the maiden tells them. “Follow the path you find there. It will lead you away from us and back to your ship, back to home. Go back now, and find your horses on the way.”

Thor starts to ask if they will do as he and Loki have asked, and stop their slow march on the town, but Loki takes his arm, flicking his free hand and redressing them both in an instant. He draws Thor across the clearing, around the great tree with its newly grown throne, and onto the path that they find there.

***

They walk in silence for a few minutes, until the clearing has disappeared behind them. Then Thor stops, pulling Loki to a halt as well. 

“How do we know…” he starts. Loki shakes his head. 

“They will or will not as they please. I think they will save the town. I felt binding magic in that deal of theirs. I do not think they take this lightly, but there is nothing we can do if they change their minds.”

“You think us so powerless against them?” Thor bristles. 

“I think a fight between us would hurt the people here more than anything the forest could do.”

Thor nods. He had not thought of that, but now that Loki brings it up, it is obvious.

When he does not argue, Loki raises an eyebrow. 

“The survival of those people is more important than any glory found in battle,” Thor says slowly. “I know that now.”

Loki smiles, and his quick kiss is enough for Thor to feel his pride. Then he pulls away, purses his lips, and lets out a loud whistle. 

There is an answering whicker, and the sound of hooves echoes down the path. Thor wraps his arm around Loki’s waist as they wait and the noise of running horses grows louder. Only a few moments later, their horses round a bend just a little ahead of them. Loki pulls away, holding out his hand. His horse comes up and nuzzles, just as Thor’s snuffles in his ear. 

“You’re a good girl aren’t you?” Loki whispers. “They didn’t do anything to you, did they?” A few heartbeats later he nods at some response Thor cannot hear or see. 

“They are alright?” Thor asks. 

“As well as they were before,” Loki answers. Thor nods. They both swing themselves up into the saddle and start down the path. This time, they do not even try to maintain a proper distance between themselves, but rather let the horses wander as close to one another as they want to. Thor gathers the reins in his right hand so he can brush Loki’s fingers with his left, and smiles softly when Loki glances over at him. 

The journey back to the town seems to take far less time than the trip into the woods. It is only an hour, maybe an hour and a half before the trees start to thin out. They have ridden in silence, mostly, sometimes marveling over a looming tree or pointing out a particularly beautiful flower along the way. Mostly, they have shared soft glances and little touches, and simply ridden on. 

Now they reach the edge of the wood, and rein their horses in as one. 

The forest has drawn back from the palisade. There is a clear seven hundred feet all around the edge of the town where the trees are simply gone. More than that, the ground there is covered with soft grass, no longer a mucky, weed-ridden mess. Thor catches Loki’s eye. 

“I guess a deal is a deal,” Loki says, in answer to the silent question. 

“I suppose,” Thor replies as he dismounts. Loki swings down as well, and Thor catches one of his hands, pulling him close. 

“No more lies, even after we leave here?” he asks, squeezing Loki’s hand a little harder than he means with the urgency of his question.

“No, Thor. No more lies. I…” Loki pauses, swallows, then licks his lips. “I would not risk this.”

“Nor would I,” Thor tells him, and when he takes Loki into his arms, he believes he will never have to.

**Author's Note:**

> +Thanks also to my darling friends who heard me complain about various aspects of this _to no end_. I really pushed myself in writing fantasy, which is super outside my comfort zone, and they were kind enough to listen. 
> 
> +Also thanks to [thecopperriver](http://thecopperriver.tumblr.com/) and [glass-oceans](http://glass-oceans.tumblr.com/) for dealing with me during the editing process <3 <3
> 
> +Find me on tumblr at [saltandlimes](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com/)!


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